Deer Lick Cave
Where I was body until I wasn’t.
I saw the constellations and I saw
the forest and I saw the whole world
like a ribbon, but I lost the stars
and the trees and my ribs
became snares for aches only
the gone could name.
I was gone when I looked up
and saw love instead of rock
face. What makes a home
if not a touch on the cheek
that can’t be replaced?
What makes a body
if not a body indisposed?
If I believe I can carve
my name into the rock
with one sharpened claw,
who is to tell me
I can’t abandon myself here,
everywhere, dark and trembling?
Beyond, each star is a star
undone, careless about its birth.
Bright and girlish and afraid,
yes, the stars must be frightened
too of the ways in which
we shape our little universes
to our bones. When I go
from here, I will break
in all the familiar ways.
I will startle and I will sing.
Walking Home
The pond mosses over and it will be April again. Cole walks ahead, points out bird calls, and Bridget tells how the thicket on our right becomes a cacophony in summer, and we stop to listen, decide the rippled voices are frogs, closer to the earth, closer to us in some unnamable way. Here, a bridge over marsh- land. There, the lake we forget silvering with distance. Red- winged blackbirds tip feathered stalks of grass, dark weight bending them toward silent water. If naming something makes it real, name me. We pause at downed trees, earth ripped up with their roots, large and old and somehow gone, but here, still. Still, the gray sky cut by geese. Still the pond- logs freckled with turtles. The cattails murmur, you can stop carrying all this with you. And we do.
MARY SIMMONS is a queer poet from Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of Mother, Daughter, Augur (June Road Press, October 2025). She earned her MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she also served as the managing editor for Mid-American Review. Her work has appeared in The Baltimore Review, ONE ART, trampset, Moon City Review, Variant Lit, The Shore, and elsewhere. She lives with her cat, Suki, at the edge of the woods.
